Henry VIII Trivia
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68 free Henry VIII trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
This Henry VIII trivia quiz covers the second Tudor king from Greenwich to Windsor: the spare son who inherited his brother's widow and his father's fortune, the young athlete of the Field of the Cloth of Gold, the Defender of the Faith who broke with Rome to marry Anne Boleyn, the dissolver of 800 monasteries, and the immobile, ulcerated tyrant of the 1540s. The easy questions cover the outline: the six wives in order, who was beheaded, who gave him a son, the minister who fell, the daughters who followed. The harder half is for readers of Scarisbrick and Starkey: the ministers arrested two days after his coronation, the mistress who bore Henry FitzRoy, the treaty that put his sister on the French throne, the verse from Leviticus, the legate who stalled the annulment, the grounds Cranmer found to void the Boleyn marriage, the bishop who married him to Jane, the painter sent to Cleves, the title given to the wife he could not bear, the yellow he wore when Catherine of Aragon died, the fall that left him unconscious for two hours, the coffin later used for Nelson, and the blood-group theory for his rages. Every answer was checked against Henry VIII's encyclopaedia entry before publishing. If you enjoy this, try our Tudors, Elizabeth I and British monarchs quizzes next.
30 of 68 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01At which Thames-side palace, also the birthplace of his daughters Mary and Elizabeth, was Henry born in June 1491?
Greenwich
Greenwich Palace saw Henry born on 28 June 1491, the second son of Henry VII; with an elder brother as heir, he was never expected to reign.
Q 02Which elder brother of Henry died in 1502, only 20 weeks after marrying his Spanish bride?
Arthur, Prince of Wales
Arthur, Prince of Wales, died at Ludlow on 2 April 1502, about twenty weeks after his wedding; ten-year-old Henry inherited his title and, eventually, his widow.
Q 03Which royal dukedom was Henry, a king's second son, given at the age of three in 1494?
Duke of York
Duke of York was one of many honours Henry VII piled on the infant, who was already Constable of Dover Castle at two; giving great offices to a child let the king keep control of them himself.
Q 04In which church was the 17-year-old Henry crowned in June 1509?
Westminster Abbey
Westminster Abbey saw Henry crowned beside his new queen on 24 June 1509, thirteen days after their wedding; four years earlier, still a boy, he had formally rejected the match.
Q 05Which two unpopular ministers of his father did Henry arrest within days of becoming king and execute in 1510?
Empson and Dudley
Empson and Dudley, Henry VII's hated revenue collectors, were seized in April 1509, just after the old king died, and beheaded in 1510; sacrificing them was an easy way for a new king to win popularity.
Q 06Who was Henry's first wife?
Catherine of Aragon
Catherine of Aragon, widow of Henry's elder brother, married him on 11 June 1509; the marriage he later fought to annul lasted almost 24 years, longer than his other five put together.
Q 07Which mistress bore Henry an acknowledged illegitimate son, Henry FitzRoy, in 1519?
Elizabeth Blount
Elizabeth Blount, one of the queen's attendants, bore the boy in June 1519; Henry made him Duke of Richmond at six, and it was widely said that he meant the child to be his successor.
Q 08At which 1513 battle, fought while Henry was campaigning in France, was King James IV of Scotland killed?
Flodden
Flodden cost James IV his life on 9 September 1513; the queen, ruling England as regent, sent a piece of the dead king's coat to her husband in France as a trophy.
Q 09Which minor 1513 victory over the French did Henry seize on for propaganda?
The Battle of the Spurs
The Battle of the Spurs, a cavalry rout near Thérouanne on 16 August 1513, is usually said to take its name from the haste with which the French horsemen spurred away, chased for six miles.
Q 10To seal peace in 1514, Henry married his sister Mary to which elderly king?
Louis XII of France
Mary Tudor married the 52-year-old Louis XII of France on 9 October 1514 to seal the Anglo-French peace; he died within three months. She had earlier been betrothed to the Habsburg heir.
Q 11At what lavish 1520 summit near Calais did Henry meet Francis I of France?
The Field of the Cloth of Gold
The Field of the Cloth of Gold ran from 7 to 24 June 1520, all jousts and feasting; yet within three weeks Henry had signed a secret treaty with Francis's great rival, Emperor Charles V.
Q 12Which title did Pope Leo X give Henry in 1521 for his book against Martin Luther?
Defender of the Faith
Leo X named Henry Defender of the Faith in 1521 for his Assertio Septem Sacramentorum; Paul III revoked the title after the break with Rome, so Parliament re-granted it by statute.
Q 13Which churchman ran Henry's domestic and foreign policy as Lord Chancellor from 1515 to 1529?
Q 21What was the great northern uprising of October 1536 against Henry's religious changes called?
The Pilgrimage of Grace
The Pilgrimage of Grace, which began in Yorkshire in October 1536, drew tens of thousands of rebels; Henry promised a pardon, then used fresh risings in early 1537 to execute the leaders and about 200 people in all.
Q 22Who led the northern rebels of 1536?
Robert Aske
Robert Aske, a Yorkshire-born lawyer of Gray's Inn, led the 1536 northern rebels; after Henry's promised pardon, fresh risings in early 1537 gave the pretext to arrest him, and he was executed at York that July.
Q 23How did Henry dress the day after learning that his first wife had died in January 1536?
All in yellow
Thomas Wolsey
Thomas Wolsey, cardinal and Lord Chancellor from 1515, fell in 1529 after failing to win the annulment, was charged with praemunire and died at Leicester in November 1530 on his way to trial.
Q 14Which Old Testament book did Henry cite to argue his marriage to his brother's widow Catherine was cursed?
Leviticus
Henry leaned on Leviticus 20:21, which warns that a man who takes his brother's wife shall be childless; awkwardly, Deuteronomy 25:5 tells a man to marry his dead brother's childless widow.
Q 15Which Italian cardinal came to England in 1528 as papal legate to hear Henry's annulment case?
Lorenzo Campeggio
Lorenzo Campeggio opened the hearing at the end of May 1529, but in July it was suspended and the pope recalled the case to Rome; the failure cost Henry's chief minister his office within months.
Q 16Which pope refused Henry's annulment and later excommunicated him?
Clement VII
Clement VII, a virtual prisoner of the emperor after the 1527 Sack of Rome, refused the annulment and in July 1533 declared Henry excommunicate unless he took back his first wife.
Q 17Which archbishop of Canterbury declared Henry's first marriage void in 1533?
Thomas Cranmer
Thomas Cranmer, consecrated archbishop in March 1533, pronounced the first marriage null at Dunstable Priory on 23 May 1533 and five days later upheld the Boleyn marriage.
Q 18Which act of 1534 made Henry head of the Church of England in place of the pope?
The Act of Supremacy
The Act of Supremacy made Henry 'the only Supreme Head in earth of the Church of England'; the Treasons Act passed in the same session made denying that title high treason.
Q 19Which chancellor was executed in 1535 on the evidence of one conversation with Richard Rich?
Thomas More
Thomas More was convicted of treason on Richard Rich's account of a single Tower conversation and beheaded on 6 July 1535; he had relied on silence, which the Treasons Act did not punish.
Q 20Which bishop of Rochester was beheaded in June 1535 for refusing to accept Henry as head of the Church?
John Fisher
John Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, was beheaded on 22 June 1535, weeks after Paul III made him a cardinal; the honour left Henry unmoved, and the execution outraged Rome.
All in yellow, with a white feather in his bonnet, Henry celebrated the news with festivities, by the imperial ambassador's report; yellow is sometimes explained instead as Spain's colour of mourning.
Q 24Which sister of Anne Boleyn had been Henry's mistress before the king pursued Anne?
Mary Boleyn
Mary Boleyn's affair with Henry came back to haunt her sister: in church law it made Anne forbidden kin to him, one of the grounds suggested for the annulment pronounced two days before Anne's execution.
Q 25How was Anne Boleyn executed in May 1536?
By sword
By sword: Henry spared her the axe and had an expert swordsman brought across the Channel, a small mercy for the queen he had condemned; her alleged lovers had died two days earlier.
Q 26How soon after Anne Boleyn's execution did Henry become engaged to his third wife?
The next day
The next day, 20 May 1536, Henry was betrothed to a woman who had been one of Anne's own ladies-in-waiting; they married ten days after that.
Q 27Which wife gave Henry his longed-for son in October 1537 and died twelve days later?
Jane Seymour
Jane Seymour bore Prince Edward on 12 October 1537 and died of childbed complications on 24 October; she was buried at St George's Chapel, Windsor, where Henry was later laid beside her.
Q 28Which act of 1535–36 united England with its western neighbour as a single nation?
The Laws in Wales Act
The Laws in Wales Act of 1535 (in force 1536) annexed Wales to England, extending English law and shire administration and giving Welsh constituencies seats in Parliament.
Q 29Which painter was sent to Cleves to portray Henry's prospective fourth bride?
Hans Holbein
Hans Holbein painted both Anne and her younger sister Amelia in 1539 so that Henry could choose between them; the likenesses pleased him far more than the bride did when she arrived.
Q 30What was the chief ground for annulling Henry's fourth marriage in 1540?
Non-consummation
Non-consummation was the chief ground when the marriage to Anne of Cleves was annulled in July 1540, six months after the wedding; her old betrothal to Francis of Lorraine, cleared beforehand, was revived as a second.